22nd Sunday: Taking up the Cross, following Jesus

Church is missionary in nature. The church is also prophetic in nature. We all participate in the same missionary spirit. We are proclaiming the Word of God through our word and deed as children of God. Proclamation is not the monopoly of the clerics or the leaders of the church but everyone’s obligation. Each one according to his or her ability, at least in one way proclaims God to the world. ‘To Proclaim’ is very effective and more witnessing than ‘to read’ or ‘to preach’. It is aggressively at the same time, sacredly emanating the sparkle of God that is deep buried in our hearts as in the words of Jeremiah in the first reading today.
All that we proclaim has a prior influence in the way we live and witness the love of God. All priests who proclaim the word of God should have had the same zeal in experiencing the experiences that they preach about. We expect priests today to practice what they preach; in the same way, the Christians who listen and practice the Christian way should be able to preach it.
In our proclamation of God’s love to others, we encounter sufferings of many kinds. Priests and bishops get killed for their faith even today in different parts of the world. An honest wife wants to save the family by her sacrifices; a father goes all the way in supporting his son in all his addictions; a daughter-in-law puts up with everything in the life of her dying mother-in-law. Politicians sacrifice a lot to get to the top spots. Athletes sweat their life to decorate their chests with Olympic medals. We witness people suffer for anything and everything to win and win and win – never lose.
Christ teaches us the same winning lesson today:
1. Take up: Don’t dump it on others, don’t drag, don’t cheat on God and other in carrying, rather taking it up, holding it firm, embracing it completely, accepting it willfully.
2. Your Cross: take up not your houses, cars, bank accounts and your jobs, rather, your cross – all that tie you down, making you aware your humanness, your naked self, your burdens, all that refuse you to call God ‘Father’, your problems, your tragedies, and your inabilities.
3. Follow me: You can do the following namely taking up and holding the cross and yet follow someone else or something else. We all have the tendency to be easily distracted by the way of the world and choose Heroes who have nothing to do with our personal life, affecting us in anyway.
Taking up our crosses and following Christ are both related since we willingly follow Jesus who gives us the strength lift our own crosses. And our crosses always need a way, a path – that road is less travelled. We are all prophets in the church, commissioned by God to proclaim his love to all. A prophet is accepted in his homeland only if he has the vocation to take up his cross and follow Him – just like our Lord Jesus. Let us imitate him in taking up our own crosses willingly and follow him joyfully. It is after all a journey of joy and a journey of hope and a journey of love. Amen